Madame Swetchine, when she arrived in Rome, was imbued with some prejudices against Madame Récamier, but they vanished at the first interview, and the love that sprang up between them was of the holiest kind:
"I feel the want of you (she wrote in 1825) as if we had passed a long time together, as if we had old associations in common. How strange that I should feel so impoverished by losing what a short time since I did not possess! Surely there is something of eternity in certain emotions. There are souls—and I think yours and mine are among the number—which no sooner come in contact with each other than they throw off the conditions of their mortal existence, and obey the laws of a higher and better world."
After an absence of eighteen months, Madame Récamier returned to Paris. It was in May, 1825. Charles X. was being consecrated at Rheims, and both Chateaubriand and Montmorency were there for the ceremony. When the former received a line to inform him that the cell in the Abbaye was again occupied, he lost no time in paying his usual visit at the same hour as before. Madame Récamier's residence in Italy had produced the desired effect on him. His fitful mood was over. Not a word of explanation or reproach was heard, and from that day to his death, twenty-three years later, the purest and most perfect harmony existed between them. He had again fallen from power, and had been rudely dismissed. His only crime had been silence. He would not advocate the reduction of interest on the public debt, which appeared to him an act of injustice. How many would be half ruined by the change from five to three per cent! He abstained from voting. De Villèle was incensed, and a heartless note informed one of the greatest men in France that his services were no longer needed. By a strange mishap he did not receive it at the right time, went to the Tuileries, attended a levee, and was going to take his place at a cabinet council, when he was told that he was no longer admissible. He had ordered his carriage for a later hour, and was now obliged to walk back in his full court robes through the streets of Paris. He long and bitterly remembered this ungenerous treatment. In his opposition to the Villèle ministry he displayed prodigious talent; and in January, 1828, it gave place to that of Martignae, and he was himself appointed ambassador at Rome.
Among the letters he wrote during his embassy, there is one very brief and touching, addressed to the little Greek Canaris, then educated in Paris by the Hellenic committee. The emancipation of the Christians of the East, whether Catholic or schismatic, was an object dear to Chateaubriand's heart, as well as to the royalists in general. The question was not embarrassed by those false views of freedom which make many who love it afraid to speak its praise lest they should seem to countenance its abuse. "My dear Canaris," he says, "I ought to have written to you long ago. Pardon me, for I am full of business. My advice to you is this: Love Madame Récamier. Never forget that you were born in Greece, and that my country has shed its blood for the freedom of yours. Above all, be a good Christian; that is, an honest man submitting to the will of God. Thus, my dear little friend, you will keep your name on the list of those famous Greeks of yore where your illustrious father has already inscribed it. I embrace you.—Chateaubriand." How delighted must the young Athenian have been to carry this note to the Abbaye-aux-Bois the next time he went to visit Madame Récamier, as he did on almost every holiday!
We have already spoken of Mathieu de Montmorency's singular death. Madame Récamier was one of the first to hear of it. She hastened to sit beside the corpse of her revered friend, and mingled her tears with those of his mother and widow. The [{95}] latter, who had always been attached to her, now became her intimate companion, and, when she came to Paris, stayed at the Abbaye expressly to be near her. Even Chateaubriand, who had been Montmorency's political rival, joined the train of mourners, and composed a prayer on the occasion for Madame Récamier's use. It is somewhat inflated, and breathes the language of a poet rather than of a Christian. It ends thus: "O miracle of goodness! I shall find again in thy bosom the virtuous friend I have lost! Through thee and in thee I shall love him anew, and my entire spirit will once more be united to that of my friend. Then our divine attachment will be shared through eternity." These expressions are overstrained; but they illustrate the character of Madame Récamier's affection for her male friends. Of these Chateaubriand became henceforward the chief, and his letters to her from Rome, together with his subsequent intercourse with her in Paris, form the most important part of her remaining history. Everything was summed up in him,—diplomacy, politics, literature: he was to her, and not to her only, their chief representative. His correspondence, as preserved by her niece, is sparkling and pointed, full of incident, and especially interesting to those who remember Rome during the last years of Leo XII. and the pontificate of Pius VIII. Three letters a week reached her while his embassy lasted, and he has inserted several of them in his "Mémoires," though not without dressing them up a little for posterity. Veneration and regard for her is their key-note. Mille tendres hommages, he writes. Que je suis heureux de vous aimer! But French politeness always sounds strange and fulsome when dissected in English. In May, 1829, he obtained leave to return to Paris for a time, and he was welcomed at the Abbaye by numerous admirers. There he read aloud his "Moise," in the presence of Cousin, Villemain, Lamartine, Mérimée, and a host of literati beside. There he expressed all his fears for the ancient dynasty under the guidance of Prince Polignac. He had no personal feeling for the minister, save that of friendship. But he could discern the signs of the times. He sought an audience of the king, to warn him of the reefs on which he was being steered; but he was no favorite with Charles X., and his request was refused. Yet he might, if his counsels had been listened to, have saved his master from exile and France from the revolution of July. The crown was in his idea above all things except the law. He would neither abandon the charter for the king, nor the king for the charter. The ordinances of July were subversive of the constitution, but the moment they were recalled he was on the monarch's side.
It was too late to stem the tide of insurrection. A ducal democrat was called to the throne. His partisans and those of the dethroned sovereign did not usually mix in society; but the salon in the Abbaye was an exception to every rule. There and at Dieppe, in the bathing season, the royalists Grenarde and Chateaubriand constantly met Ballanche, Ampère, Lacordaire, and Villemain, who welcomed the new regime. Madame Récamier, with admirable tact, kept them in social harmony, and her efforts in this direction were the more praiseworthy because she was not indifferent to their respective bias. She had always loved the old dynasty, both because of its hereditary rights and the glorious associations attached to it in history. She lamented the shortsightedness of the Polignac ministry; but she lamented still more the accession of Louis Philippe, which drove the greater part of her friends into the obscurity of private life.
In April, 1830, her husband died. He was then in his eightieth year, and during his last illness was removed to the Abbaye, that he might be surrounded by every sort of attention. In taste, character, and understanding he differed from Madame Récamier [{96}] as widely as possible. They had but one quality in common: each was good and kind. Notwithstanding the singularity of their tie, they lived together thirty-five years without any disagreement. M. Bernard and his old friend Simonard were also gone. Madame Lenormant was married, and though the family circle that used to dine at the Abbaye was no more, some faithful friends, such as Ballanche and Paul David, met daily at the widow's hospitable board. The former of these was especially disappointed by the fall of the elder Bourbon branch. He had hoped to see its alliance with that moral, political, and social progress which was the dream of his existence. Elective monarchy now seemed to hold out better prospects of his palingénésie sociale.
The attitude assumed by Chateaubriand at this period was such as to command general respect. He attempted, but in vain, to procure the recognition of Henry V., and to place his rights under the protection of the Duke of Orleans. Then, declining to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Philippe, he retired from the peerage, and gave up his pension. The friends, however, from whom he differed were delighted to perceive that his cordiality with them in private was in no degree lessened. But there was a circle within the circle that frequented the Abbaye, and it was in 1832 that the Duc de Noailles became enrolled among the select few. This was owing in part to the sympathy which existed between him and Chateaubriand, and the high estimate which the latter formed of his judgment. Neither was he so dazzled by the future of society as to forget or despise its past. Both found in the history of the kings of France the sources of all subsequent improvement. The Duc de Noailles did not come alone to the Abbaye. His regard for Madame Récamier was such that he brought with him every member of his family whom he thought most worthy of her acquaintance, and invited her in turn and her friends to grace with their presence the fair domain of Maintenon. Here, surrounded by souvenirs of Louis XIV., Chateaubriand took notes for a chapter in his "Memoirs," which was not inserted, but given in manuscript to Madame Récamier. It fills seventeen pages, and forms one of the most striking parts of the volume under review. The writer recalls the delicious gardens he has visited in Greece, Ithaca, Grenada, Rome, and the East, and compares them with the surroundings of the château of Maintenon. He touches on many salient points in the history of that remarkable lady who bought it in 1675, and whose corpse had, in his own day, been dragged round the sacred enclosure of St. Cyr with a halter round the neck. He then passes to the night spent in the château by Charles X., when the king, driven from the seat of government, dismissed his Swiss Guards, and placed himself almost in the condition of a prisoner. It was in Madame Récamier's drawing-room that the auto-biography for which this description was intended was first published, and that in the way so fashionable among the ancient Romans and still common in France—by the author's reading it aloud to an assembly of friends. Thus Statius read his "Thebais," [Footnote 16] thus Alfieri his tragedies, at Rome. The readings of the "Mémoires d'outre Tombe" spread over two years, and his fame extended so fast that it was difficult to find room for those who craved admittance. Publishers, also, were eager to purchase the manuscript, to be printed at the writer's death; and some royalist friends availed themselves of this circumstance to obtain for him a pension for life. The excitement attending the recitals relieved his ennui, and literary labor helped to pay his debts. The work itself, though intensely interesting to all who heard it and felt personally interested in the events it recorded, is too lengthy, detailed, peevish, [{97}] and egotistic to add much to Chateaubriand's fame. Any theme he handled was sure to call forth eloquence and genius; but himself was the very worst subject he could choose,—the worst, not, perhaps, for the entertainment of his readers, but for the reputation of the writer.
[Footnote 16: Juvenal, Sat. VII., 82-86.]